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9/20/2015

TIFF Review: 'Sicario'

Sicario

(USA, 121 min.)

Dir. Denis Villeneuve, Writ. Taylor Sheridan

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio
Del Toro

Programme: Special Presentations (North American Premiere)

Photo courtesy of TIFF.

Denis Villeneuve is a marksman. The great Canadian director
of Incendies, Prisoners, and Enemy
delivers another solid film with the exhilaratingly intense drug war drama Sicario. Sicario is Villeneuve’s second Hollywood production after Prisoners, and every ounce of his talent
still stands. Like fellow Québécois filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée (whose Demolitionopened the Festival),
Villeneuve even improves in Hollywood. Sicario
hits with deadly aim.

Villeneuve wades two borders south of Canada as this drug
war drama explosively traverses the USA and Mexico, creating an engrossing
borderland tale about a futile war. Emily Blunt stars as Kate Mercer, a FBI agent
who works kidnapping details until Matt (Josh Brolin), her flip-flop wearing
superior, taps her for a special mission to ferret out the jefes of the cartels that leave messes of cadavers for her to clean
up.

The drug trade is nasty business, as Sicario shows from its gut-punch of an opener that sees Kate
discover a house full of remains buried between the walls. Anyone is fair game
and everyone’s a suspect, since the only reliable truth to the business is that
everyone gets corrupted. It’s another F on America’s war report card.

Kate discovers the full extent of the drug trade’s
pervasiveness when Matt summons her for an ambiguous assignment working with
Mexican ally Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), whose authority is even more unclear
than the mission objective is. The drug war has no rules and is a game in which
nice guys finish last, and Kate’s first day on her new assignment shows how
brutally cutthroat the drug war is—both from the POV of the lawmen and the
outlaws.

A heart-pounding shootout amidst a traffic jam at the
Mexico/USA border spills the bloodshed across both sides of the border.
Villeneuve, reuniting with Prisoners
DP Roger Deakins, shoots this sequence with a dramatic wallop as frenetic
gunfire disorients the viewer, yet the camera trains in and out of traffic,
dodging cars like Frogger, as it offers an all-seeing eye to the all-encompassing
violence. Villeneuve’s direction is precise and Deakins’ cinematography is, of
course, excellent. The same goes for a riveting sequence in the final act as
the agents stage a covert op and infiltrate the cartel’s underground network. Villeneuve
films the scene with a mix of night-vision and thermal cameras that cast the
agents as ants in a sprawling network. Predators lurk behind every door and
there’s a devil in every corner of the frame, and Sicario intensely gives the viewer a breathless high as Kate fights
for her life against undiscernible baddies and good guys who are a shade of
grey at best.

The film offers a brutally high body count—like, Hamlet high—as violence ripples into
Kate’s home as her investigation deepens. By making the sturdy lead a petite
female, Sicario introduces a heroine
in the vein of Clarice Starling as Kate brings figurative balls that outmatch
her perceived vulnerability. She might not look as physically strong as her
teammates are, but she’s a wily rock: shrewd, perceptive, and unshakable. Another
of the film’s suspenseful moments follows Kate home from the bar where a
prospective one-night stand turns into an attempted murder. Kate looks like
prey, but she’s a killer, and Blunt’s fierce performance gives the character
heart, courage, and agency. Empowered not by her physicality but by her ability
to critically assess the situation and ask the right questions, Kate is a
formidable ally for the viewer. She’s the only one we can trust and the
conviction of Blunt’s performance holds the viewer’s hand every step of the
way—and Sicario is so intense that
ample hand-holding is needed.

The real killer of the film, though, is Benicio Del Toro
with his coolly ambiguous performance as Alejandro. A stealthy killer,
Alejandro straddles the sides of good and evil during Kate’s investigation and
plays the roles of both friend and foe. He guides the investigation with an
intimidating stare and unnerving confidence, and Del Toro plays the team’s
insider as a man marked and burned by experience in the kill or be killed
mentality of the drug trade. He owns the film in its unexpected final act,
surprising the audience with his cutthroat coldness and deadly aim. Sicario pulls no punches.

Sicario marks
another remarkable drama from Villeneuve as the film plays out as a non-stop
adrenaline rush. The pulse-pounding score by Jóhann Jóhannsson puts one’s heart
on one’s throat as the tension mounts until the film’s violent finale that
shakes one’s confidence in the system. It’s hard to stand up once Sicario is over. The film leaves one
shaken not just by the action, but by the incredibly bleak parable on a futile
war that knows no heroes.

Rating: ★★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)

Sicario opens in theatres Sept. 25.

Please visit www.tiff.net for more
information on this year’s festival.